Visible focus and hover: Crawl Audit check 138

Short answer: people who use a keyboard need to see which link or button they're on. Removing the browser's focus outline without a replacement leaves them lost. Check 138 passes almost every site, because it can't see styles inside stylesheets, so test this one by pressing Tab.

What Crawl Audit checks

• Pass: the HTML contains a :focus or :focus-visible style, or the page links any stylesheet.
• Warning: neither.

Because any stylesheet passes, nearly every site does. The result doesn't tell you whether focus is actually visible.

What WCAG says

• 2.4.7 Focus Visible (level AA): "Any keyboard operable user interface has a mode of operation where the keyboard focus indicator is visible."
• "Without a focus indicator, sighted keyboard users cannot operate the page."
• 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (level AA): the focused item mustn't be "entirely hidden due to author-created content", such as a sticky bar (check 135).
• 2.4.13 Focus Appearance (level AAA) goes further: an indicator at least as large as a 2 pixel outline, with 3:1 contrast.

How to test and fix

• Press Tab through your page. You should always see where you are.
• Search your CSS for outline: none or outline: 0. If you remove the outline, add a clear replacement.

a:focus-visible, button:focus-visible {
  outline: 2px solid currentColor;
  outline-offset: 2px;
}

:focus-visible shows the outline for keyboard users without showing it on every mouse click.

Sources

• W3C, Understanding 2.4.7 Focus Visible, 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) and 2.4.13 Focus Appearance, checked 6 October 2026.